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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes.
Scripts
Acting and performance are key subjects of If We Were Villains and key structural elements in the novel. Most obviously, acts and scenes replace chapters in the novel’s presentation of its content. Equally important is the use of other elements of dramatic scripts, like the attribution of lines to characters, the insertion of scene-setting prologues, and the inclusion of Exeunt omnes, a stage direction in Latin that means ‘all exit,’ as the novel’s final words. When Rio writes the characters’ interactions as dialogue from a script—removing the descriptive words, speaker attributions, and phrases that are common to a novel—she underscores the ease with which the roles the characters play become confounded with their sense of self. At the same time, the recurrent use of structures associated with drama contributes to the novel’s exploration of the murky boundaries between art and life.
Tragedy
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the Western tradition has heralded tragedy as the most important dramatic genre. Academically conservative Dellecher Academy is no exception. As the students progress from comedy (third year) to tragedy (fourth year), the shift in genre marks their passage toward maturity and graduation. But in the case of these seven characters, the turn to tragedy is not merely an academic concern for they tackle deadly serious choices and their equally weighty consequences.
The long intellectual tradition defining tragedy is crucial to the novel, particularly the still-influential definition offered by Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago. According to the Greek philosopher, tragedies imitate serious, complete, and consequential actions. They are more significant than comedies, which use lesser figures and actions as their subjects. As the students debate the features of tragedy, particularly the figure of the tragic hero, readers are encouraged to reflect on what it means to be a tragic hero. The assignment of this key role shifts on the page and the school’s stage when Oliver steps into the role of tragic hero and confesses to a murder he did not commit.
Identity
The central cast of characters both is and is not fixed in the novel. While there are seven, then six, actors in the fourth-year class, each person’s identity is complicated by the multiple roles they are assigned to play. As Oliver explains to Colborne, actors live layered lives, slipping between and among identities. In saying this, Oliver echoes Gwendolyn’s claim in Act One that each performance is split between the actor and the role. The challenge the characters face is to learn to navigate the blurred boundary between their own selves and roles they are assigned in dramas at home, in school, and on the stage. As much as it is about playing a part, If We Were Villains also explores what it means to be yourself, to resist or reject assigned roles. The students are pushed to confront their private fears and secret hopes, work that the novel includes as part of their efforts to master Shakespearean drama but that also contributes to the development of its coming-of-age plot elements.
